What’s New?
Recycled Creativity
A Recent Success Story
Humor Is A Funny Thing
Why I Love Referrals
About Zeimer’s Advertising Shoppe

What’s New?

As a freelance San Francisco copywriter, here’s what I’ve been doing since my March 2011 newsletter:

• I’ve written another 17 articles for the Intuit Small Business Blog. Read any of my 80+ articles and feel free to comment!
• I wrote and edited the website copy for the owner of a recovery auditing firm in Arizona to showcase his decades of expertise.
• My colleague, Ellen Young, has planned and purchased a variety of  targeted media for Amdro Fire Ant, Valley Healthwide Centers, Insound Medical, Sonus Hearing Care Professionals, PODS and Kikkoman.
• I edited the copy for a three-postcard campaign for a leading San Francisco insurance brokerage.
• As the #1 listing on Google for “healthcare copywriting“, I created a :60 and :30 radio campaign for a Midwest pharmacy chain and more blogs for the nation’s leading vein treatment clinic.
• I updated the website for BookBankUSA.org, a local nonprofit that donates books and computers to schools worldwide.
• I continue to write posts for the GroupPrice.com/blog, a leading B2B site for small business daily discount deals with savings of 30 to 75%.
• Plus, miscelleaneous Websites and other projects for friends and colleagues.

Read past issues of Zeimer’s NewZletter: March 2011 • Nov 2010 • July 2010 • April 2010 • December 2009 • October 2009 • August 2009 • July 2009 • March 2009

Recycled Creativity

As a Certified Green Bay Area Business, I took a pledge to reduce my carbon footprint by using recycled products and services wherever possible. To that end, I’m recycling some of my past successes as a freelance copywriter in each of these newsletters.
Here’s an example: Porsche Newspaper Ad.

I was working at The Bloom Agency in Dallas. It was the day before we were making a new business presentation to Porsche Dealers of North America. While sitting on the throne, I saw a small blurb in the Sports section of the Dallas Morning News that Porsche had just won 8 out of 10 places at the 24-Hour LeMans Endurance Race.

A few minutes later, I wrote this headline, showed it to the Creative Director, and sat with an Art Director who sketched out the concept. The 8 Team Porsche drivers’ names and their times were circled in red in the original artwork. We didn’t win the account, but I’m proud to say that I created a terrific ad for an important agency presentation.

A Recent Success Story

The Spring/Summer bi-annual newsletters for three upscale Life Care communities just came off the press. They were for ongoing clients: The Sequoias – San Francisco, The Sequoias –Portola Valley, and The Tamalpais – Marin County through Northern California Presbyterian Homes & Services.Each six-page newsletter contains five stories, including “Residents Are Using More Technology, More Often”, an in-depth resident profile, a staff profile, a community feature, what’s new, and upcoming events.

Download PDFs of each newsletter:

– Spring/Summer 2011 Sequoias – San Francisco Newsletter;

– Spring/Summer 2011 Sequoias – Portola Valley Newsletter;

– Spring/Summer 2011 Tamalpais – Marin County Newsletter.

Humor Is A Funny Thing

Most often, clients change a few words of a page of copy before it gets produced as an ad, newsletter, radio commercial, web page, blog, or the like. But once in a while, they rewrite it themselves because a committee within the company decided they all wanted to say they had creative input.

To that end, a client recently sent me this quote to apologize for a committee rewrite of a project, which turned my proposed entertaining radio scripts into something far less fun: “A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled.” – Sir Barnett Cocks, British politician

For more advertising humor, here are some actual ads from the 1950s when vitamins were full of pep, doctors were promoting smoking, movie stars were telling you to send cartons of smokes for Christmas, and kids were used in gun ads. Download PDF of “Never to be Seen Again Advertising of Yesteryear”.

Why I Love Referrals

Last year, over 70% of my revenue came from referrals through Business Network International chapters in North America. The majority of my income came from my colleagues at BNI Embarcadero, the largest word-of-mouth referral chapter on the West Coast. We meet every Wednesday from 715 – 9am at L’Olivier French Restaurant, 465 Davis Court (between Washington and Jackson Streets), San Francisco, CA 94111. If you’d like to join us for a meeting, please contact me. Speaking of referrals, I received some recently for possible projects with a few technology companies, an insurance broker, and a financial institution. Gotta love those referrals!

About Zeimer’s Advertising Shoppe

Zeimer’s Advertising Shoppe is an award-winning writing consultancy and ad agency. As a freelance direct response copywriter, email and newsletter copywriter, website copywriter, and healthcare copywriter, I create content for ads, brochures, direct response/email campaigns, radio and TV scripts, White Papers, newsletters, and more. For information or to receive an estimate on your next project, contact me via email or call 415.491.1058.